


Axe & Hammer

by Tedmia



Category: God of War (Video Games), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Comedy, Family Drama, Gen, Marvel Norse Lore, People Who Don't Like to Talk About Issues Talking About Issues, Post-Canon, Post-Game(s), Post-Thor: The Dark World, Pre-Thor: Ragnarok (2017), References to Norse Religion & Lore, Warnings May Change
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2019-01-12
Packaged: 2019-09-30 19:16:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 11,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17229671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tedmia/pseuds/Tedmia
Summary: One night in the depth of Fimbulwinter, a visitor drops from the sky in front of Kratos' house in a burst of light. His son had been dreaming of this moment, and they had prepared.They hadn't expected Thor to be unconscious. Or blond.





	1. Chapter 1

Hidden in the Wild Woods of Midgard, a small wooden cabin stood in a small clearing. It was low-slung to the ground, as if the building itself was hunkering against the cold of the multi-year winter. An angled fence made of sharpened birch sticks protected a small copse of pine on one side; a lean-to on the other protected various provisions and equipment too bulky or dangerous to store inside from the worst of the elements. There were stalls for livestock under the lean-to, but these were empty of anything but roughly cut (and neatly stacked) firewood, the animals they were intended for long gone. The cabin was solid and well-built, sturdy, though utterly unadorned, without care to appearance. A purely practical crafting, devoid of any artistry except for the runes carved two fingers deep into the timbers of the doorframe -- though these were practical as well, powerful wards of protection.

The night was nearly pitch black; though the moon was full, it could not piece the thick cover of clouds, nor had it for many, many months. The only light in the clearing was a soft blue glow hovering over what would be an otherwise nondescript pile of stone and smashed wood against a cliff wall some meters away from the front of the cabin that gave the entire clearing a ghostly, ethereal quality. These woods were always quiet at night, and had become even more so in the advent of Fimbulwinter. The only sounds were the distant river -- somehow still running and not frozen over yet, though the ice crept over more of its surface with each day -- and an almost inaudible hum coming from the glow over the pile of rubble that was accompanied by a piercing, clean smell near the glow, as if the air itself was somehow being burned within it. There was not even a breeze to rustle the needles of the pines.

This stillness was suddenly interrupted, like a sword entering a gut, by a lance of surging white light, so bright it lit even the distant mountains like day. All the colors flickered within this column of light, but chaotically, as if someone had smashed a rainbow into uncountable shards of glass and scrambled it within the white. The light came also with a howling, crashing roar, like the thunder of a dozen lightning strikes at once, but not allowed to fade and echo, just a continuous noise that shook the ground itself.

And the Earth did tremble as this sword of light slammed against it. First, only the lightest snow and fallen needles fled before the power of this lance of light and shining color, then the heavier pack, then the hard ice and frozen ground itself began to chip and pull away, and the rocks and cliffs began to tremble, and the weakest trees began to creak and threaten a warning that they too shall soon fall --

And then it was over as suddenly as it had begun. For a moment the only sound was the gentle patter of snow and pine needles resettling to the ground.

Then the door to the cabin swung open, revealing a muscular, hard-faced man, his head clean-shaven but with a full, thick beard, holding an axe embossed with runes and gold filigree. Beside him was a boy just at the beginnings of puberty, holding a bow and nocking an arrow. Though the man was barechested, the boy was clothed in thick furs he had been sleeping in.

For a moment, the two stood in the doorway, holding in their breath, as they looked around. The boy was rapidly blinking the spots out of his eyes that had yet to fade from the bright light a few seconds past, but the man looked around the clearing, his eyes hard and unblinking. If he had any lingering discomfort from the sudden light, he gave no sign of it.

“Can you see anything, boy?” he asked in a low rumble. His voice was like two stones slowly grinding against each other.

“No, Father,” the boy replied, still blinking rapidly. “It was so bright, I --” He stopped suddenly with a small gasp, and pulled the string of his bow back, ready to fire.

“What? What you do you see?” the man asked impatiently, bringing his axe up as if to throw it.

“There’s -- there’s somebody on the ground. A body. I can’t tell if they’re alive or not -- and the ground’s all burned behind them. It’s still too dark.”

 The man took a cautious step forward. “Wait here, Atreus. If we are attacked, do not stay inside, for you will be trapped.”

“Yes, Father. Ljösta,”  Atreus whispered, and the string of his bow began to glow with a faint blue light that arced down the shaft of the arrow, gathering in the flint of his arrowhead like a flame on a wick. He whispered another incantation, and shot the arrow into the ground off to the side of the doorway. As soon as the arrow touched the ground, a dozen ghostly crows burst from it.

“Make sure there’s no one waiting to ambush us,” he told the spectral birds, which flew off in all directions. This was a trick he had learned recently; when he and his Father had been journeying to spread his mother’s ashes, he hadn’t the time to learn to do anything with his summons but sic them on whatever enemies were in their way (except Ratatöskr, and he’d rather avoid calling on his abrasive, insulting “help” anyway), but he had plenty of time in the depths of Fimbulwinter to expand their usefulness. 

Meanwhile, his father continued to approach the body outside the burned circle. He -- for he could now see this was a man -- was lying face-down. He had longish, dirty blond hair that was stringy from lack of washing. Most of his body was covered by a dark red cape, which was also dingy, but one unarmored arm was splayed out over his head. He was breathing shallowly. He was either unconscious or well pretending to be.

Kratos thought it more likely to be the former, from the look of that bloody mat of hair near his temple. There was a sizable dent in the ground in the middle of the burned pattern, with some blood and hair already frozen in the center. He threw the axe next to the body’s head. It buried itself all the way to the cheek of the blade into the frozen sod, but the man didn’t react at all, just continued to breathe in the same slightly ragged pattern. He held out his hand, and the axe removed itself from the ground and spun obediently back into his palm.

“Boy,” he called out once he thought it unlikely the stranger would suddenly leap up and attack, “is this him?”

For the last several weeks, Atreus had been having the same dream, every night. They were awoken in the dead of night by a tremendous, shattering noise and blinding light, and when they looked out the door…

“Uh,” the boy said, as he approached behind his father. He was about to go closer, but his father put out his empty hand to stop his approach. The boy looked up at Kratos impatiently, who slowly withdrew his hand. 

“Approach no closer than you need to see him clearly,” he growled in a tone that would sound unkind to those who did not know them, but Atreus knew to be a dispassionate order. His father just...sounded like that, even when he tried not to.  

Atreus took another step closer. He examined the figure for a moment.

“I...don’t think so?”

“Why are you uncertain?” 

“Well, in the dream, he was standing, and there was lightning all around. And...the burn wasn’t there.” He started to walk around to the other side of the man, thought better of it, and stopped. “And I don’t see Mjolnir, though it might be under his cape. Oh, and his armor’s all different. In the dream, he’s wearing hunting leathers and a travelling cloak. I never really got a good look at his face in the dreams except that his eyes glowed blue, but I think his beard was longer than this.”

Kratos considered this. In his younger years, he would have simply beheaded this unconscious stranger, to be safe, rolled the corpse into the ravine, and thought no more of it. Even now, the idea tempted him, especially considering the _last_ stranger to arrive at their cabin. Then, he reached down to his belt. “Head.”

He held up a severed head with two glowing, golden eyes, backwards-curling horns sprouting from its forehead, and runes tattooed so thickly around its scalp they appeared to be close-shorn hair at first glance.

The head looked down at the body and considered for a moment.

“Well, brother, this definitely isn’t Thor. I can see a resemblance, yes, but it isn’t ‘im. His hair’s wrong, Thor’s gotta head of ginger minge you could scrub a pot with, but this bloke-”

“Is he from Asgard?” Kratos interrupted.

“Difficult to say. I don’t recognize the bugger and the Aesir didn’t dress like this when I was there, but I also haven’t exactly been keepin’ up on current events in Asgard besides what Odin saw fit to tell me in our torture sessions." 

Atreus relaxed fractionally, but Kratos didn’t react as if he had heard what the head had said.

“Hey Mimir, the burn looks like it’s a pattern. Do you recognize it?”

Atreus pointed at the burn on the ground just beyond the stranger, and Kratos raised the head a little higher to give him a better view. 

“Hmm...that’s strange… it definitely _looks_ Aesir, but there doesn’t seem to be any meaning to it, as far as I can tell, and some of the elements look a little off. Although, look, there, on the far side.” 

Kratos and Atreus looked. While most of the pattern was symmetrical and sharp as a brand on a cow’s flank, about a quarter of the design was warped, the lines and chains of the pattern stretched and squashed and bend back on itself at sharp angles, like someone had taken hold of a flattened bolt of cloth and twisted it.

“What does that mean?” Atreus asked.

“Beats me, lad. Brother, do you want to give our guest a slap on the noggin and see if he has any answers? I think all we’re gettin’ now is more questions.”

Kratos said nothing. 

“If he is from Asgard,” Mimir said to Kratos, more quietly, “this might be your only chance to get some intel, before they send someone else to find out why he didn’t return.”

Kratos said nothing still, and Mimir was about to continue, when he finally spoke.

“If he is from Asgard, then I do not care who he is. But I must know how he passed the repaired ward.”

“Aye,” Mimir said grimly. “Might be why he’s in such a sorry state, but if he can get through alive, even unconscious…”

Kratos returned Mimir’s head to his belt, and let Mimir’s thought hang unfinished.

Fortunately, he had chains that he knew would be able to hold even a God.

\-------------------

Thor woke with his head exploding and his arms refusing to obey his command. For a few confused moments, he thought with mild horror that he had actually lost a drinking contest with Volstagg -- though not by much, if this was his state on regaining consciousness -- until he regained a little more of his senses and remembered he hadn’t even seen Volstagg in nearly four years, let alone drank with him. Blearily, he opened his eyes. 

He was looking at an uncarpeted wooden floor of roughly hewn logs, made smooth by the wear of feet and dirt ground into the grain. It was dark and the air stung his eyes, wherever he was. It smelled of stale smoke, roasted meat and various herbs, and sweat. Perhaps he was in an smokehouse. Where the smokehouse itself was, that was the next question. 

He also discovered that the reason he couldn’t move his arms wasn’t the mightiest hangover Asgard had ever witnessed, but the thick chains tying him to the post at his back. A quick flex test told him that these chains were magically reinforced. Moreover, they _burned_ slightly as he pressed against them. He could actually see the links start to glow the more he pressed, and a tiny tongue of flame even made its way out of one link like a curious snake testing the air. He relaxed. They were beginning to hurt faster than they would break, and he couldn't move his hands more than opening his fingers. Whoever bound him knew what they were doing.

He looked up.

Ah, so his first guess of cure-house wasn’t entirely off base, though he could see now that this was actually a one-room dwelling. Very primitive, by the looks of it. Fandral had talked him into going camping for a few months with the Warriors Three on Vanaheim in a place like this a few centuries ago. He was bored out of his skull the entire time, to the point he carved his father’s face into the side of a nearby mountain just to have something to do. With Mjolnir. He took a moment to inwardly wince at the memory -- it had caused a minor diplomatic incident, not that he had cared at the time -- then refocused on the present.

Sitting off to the side on a bed was a boy, with the thin and spindly look of a child that was just about to begin his growth into to a man. He was holding a bow, decorated with gold and writing that Thor couldn’t quite read from this distance, and writing in a vellum notebook bound with leather string in the light of his bowstring, which was glowing blue. 

Directly in front of him, standing with massive arms folded over his chest, was a muscular man with skin so chalky and pale that Thor immediately thought it to be war-paint. He wore leather trousers and a belt, though the only thing covering his torso and arms was a thick leather pauldron over one shoulder, lined with fur. The thick red tattoo winding its way around his body, like a sash that had been pressed into his skin in wide bands and loose circles, only solidified his assessment. He had a highly decorated axe tied to his belt that practically hummed with magic even to Thor’s relatively (compared to the rest of his family, anyway) untrained senses. He could almost taste the thing. And it felt...familiar to him, but distantly. It was like the sensation of meeting someone at a party that you knew you’ve met before, but couldn’t place when and where, or even the details, just the vague familiarity.

The bearded man was staring at him with the sort of icy glare that told him at once everything the man was thinking, but nothing.

“I would like nothing more than to bury this axe into your neck,” the glare said, “but I will not tell you why.” 

“Boy,” the man grunted, and it took Thor a moment to realize he was talking to the child, as his unblinking stare never left Thor’s face. The boy looked up, and with a wordless exclamation of surprise, dropped the notebook and nocked an arrow, pointing it at Thor’s face. 

OK, this was still far from the worst thing he’d ever woken up to. 

“I’m going to assume this isn’t Xandar, then,” he said with a forced cheerfulness. He’d heard rumors that Xandar had come into possession of an object that sounded suspiciously like an Infinity Stone, but neither of these two looked anything like Xandarians. And he knew a Xandarian would _die_ before being caught in a state of half-undress in a dirty, wooden hut. At least Asgard had _trees._  

“How did you find this place. How did you get through the ward,” the man said, ignoring him. 

Thor blinked a few times. Ward? “I… didn’t? Well, not on purpose, anyway. I was on my way to Xandar, and next thing I know I wake up in this hut, tied to a post. Which, granted, wouldn’t be the first time I woke somewhere with no idea where I was or how I got there and tied to something, but there are usually more women…” he trailed off, as he noticed a set of antlers mounted to the wall. He knew that animal, and knew it only lived on one place in the cosmos.

“Is this _Midgard?_ ” How had the Bifrost managed to send him to Earth? It was in the complete opposite direction!  

“You will answer my questions,” the man said. The tone of his voice didn’t change, not that it was friendly to begin with, but the magic axe moved from his belt to his hand.

Thor, ignoring this, continued on. The man was indeed quite intimidating, but he knew Heimdall could pull him out at any moment, so he wasn’t especially concerned.  “Would you happen to have a phone somewhere around? Or perhaps I could send an electronic mail?” 

Thor had never sent an electronic mail before and didn’t have the faintest idea how to do so, but he had heard about it from Jane, and it sounded terribly convenient.

For whatever reason, this seemed to throw the man slightly, as his eyes briefly looked unsure, though his stance didn’t change at all.

“I couldn’t tell you either, brother. Sounds like gibberish to me,” said a voice from the man’s hip. 

Thor blinked, and regretted as it made his head swim briefly. “Did you just talk out of your arse?”

The man reached down, and pulled what Thor had initially presumed to be a wineskin off of his belt that he could now see what was a man’s severed head. He held it up, and turned it to face Thor.

The severed head opened its eyes. Then its mouth.

“Well--”

“ _Ohhh my God!”_ Thor yelled, his feet scrabbling against the floorboards. The support pillar behind him groaned as he pressed against it.

The talking head paused, taken aback by the outburst, and then continued, “Well, this definitely isn’t him and I still have no sodding clue who it could be.” 

“How do you speak?” 

The head paused, his mouth still open. “What?” 

“I can see that you obviously have no lungs, your neck was bisected at the vocal cords, and you have no apparatus to move air through them even if you still had them. How are you talking, Head?”

“Oh great, another one,” the head muttered. “Well, as unpleasant as it is, that part is actually pretty simp-”

“Focus,” the man snarled, shaking the head very slightly.

“Right, right. To bring us back, how did you bypass the wards around these woods? They are still intact, so whatever spell you did didn’t break them by brute force.” The head paused, as if considering something. “Did you slip between the worlds?” 

“Well, in a manner of speaking. I was using the Bifrost to travel to a port on Vanaheim to catch a ship to Xandar -- it’s beyond the reach of Yggdrasil by a few hundred light-years -- then I felt like I was being slammed into a mountain, and then I woke up here.”

Now both the head and the stoic man holding him had expressions of surprised confusion, though the man with a body recovered faster. 

“I am tired of this.”

“Brother,” the head started just after, “I think he may be more than a bit off his head. Maybe we should --”

“Oh, by the way, have any of you seen my hammer? I’d call it, but you’ve been such wonderful hosts and I’d rather not break your home. It’s very…” he looked around, looking for a word, “cramped. Charming. I mean charming. Yes.” He grinned winningly.

The mood in the air, already tense, seemed to tighten even more. The boy, who’d been silently pointing the arrow at Thor’s face and occasionally glancing at the man and head, spoke now.

“Your hammer?”

“Oh, yes,” Thor said cheerfully. “My hammer, Mjolnir. Have you seen it around? I don’t have it on me at the moment, but if you could just point me to it, I can collect it and be on my way.” 

The man had replaced the head on his belt, and was now holding the axe in a throwing stance over his head. The golden vambrace on his other arm expanded into a circular shield.

“You will not return to Asgard. Your message shall remain undelivered.”

Thor smiled then. “Oh, good, threats, _now_ we’re getting somewhere. I know not what your quarrel with me is, but I do know how to deal with those.” Behind his back, he spread his fingers.

The man swung his axe towards Thor’s neck, ice growing into wicked, jagged edges over the blade.

Then the back wall of the house exploded, and Mjolnir settled into Thor’s palm. Thor knew he couldn’t break the chains around him, but the pillar? He could break the pillar.

He surged forward, and half of the support pillar came with him, splintering at the end. He swung around and backwards, bringing his feet up in a backflip. The edge of the pale man’s axe collided with Mjolnir's side. It rebounded with a clang and the sudden sharp smell of ozone.

“Let’s take this outside, shall we? I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t want to break any more of your hou-”

The man yelled wordlessly in his face, then slammed his shield into it. Thor flew out the hole Mjolnir had just entered, slamming into the rock wall behind. He felt the section of pillar he was still tied to explode into splinters, and the chains fell away.

Huh, there were blades at either end. So they were a magical _weapon_ , and not just chains. Chain seemed rather long to be useful, though.

“Thank you, I appreciate it! I would feel terribly guilty if I broke your home in addition to your face,” Thor said, as he began to spin Mjolnir.

Then the axe came flying out of the house towards him, the pale man leaping behind it, face distorted in a yell of anger and hatred. The child followed him, an arrow drawn and ready and pointed right at Thor's center of mass.

Thor smiled. It’d been a while since he’d had a good fight.

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A little short, but this was a pretty natural stopping point, i think.

The glowing blue arrow fired by the child reached Thor before the thrown axe. He shifted Mjolnir in front of his chest to intercept the missle, which burst into splinters and sparks of magic when it hit the hammer. The axe followed immediately after, and he swung Mjolnir to the side. The deflected axe shed chips of ice and sparks as it slammed into the rock wall next to Thor instead of his head.

He wasn’t fast enough to stop the fist.

It slammed into his nose, and his vision exploded into stars.

Hm. Broke his nose in one hit. Not bad. Not quite a punch from a really pissed-off Hulk, but it was pretty up there.

Then two more punches, a left hook and right to his temples, and the man screamed a warcry in his ear as he brought his knee up into Thor’s gut. Thor felt his armor crumple as the wind was driven from his lungs, and his ears rung from both the physical blows and the scream in his face.

But that left his assaulter wide open, and he swung Mjolnir into the man’s side. He went skidding off the ground from the blow, unable to hold his footing. Electricity arced across his skin and into the ground from where Mjolnir had struck him.

“Ow,” Thor muttered to himself, his head ringing and blood flowing down his face.

“Father!” the child yelled, and ah, that made sense.

Then he pointed another arrow at Thor, and yelled “ _Úlfr Hlaup!_ ” as he loosed it. His aim was a bit off, though, as the arrow simply _thk_ ’d sadly into the ground at Thor’s feet. Huh. So much for--

Then the world exploded into wolves.

Thor yelped in a way that was definitely _not_ unmanly as three ghostly, glowing wolves burst from where the arrow hit the ground and wasted no time in attempting to aerate the interior of his neck. Despite their insubstantial forms, the spectral wolves seemed to weigh far more than flesh-and-blood wolves, as they quickly pulled him to the ground, their bites numbing his muscles wherever they bit. He punched one in the muzzle hard enough to turn a real wolf’s head into ground meat. It merely paused for a fraction of a second, as if shocked at his gall, before it resumed trying to rip off his breastplate.

“Why won’t these stupid dogs die?” he yelled, and then one managed to get a tooth all the way to his neck. Just one, a little nip that barely drew blood, but that was far too close now.

If any of them noticed his eyes glowing blue or had the intelligence as summoned magical constructs to do so, they didn’t react in time to avoid what this heralded.

Electricity arced between his fingers and exploded from Mjolnir like searching tentacles. Then a bolt of lightning reached down from the clouds and slammed into him and the wolves. They vanished into puffs of magic and ozone, and Thor took advantage of the flash and thunder to leap to the roof of the house. He just needed a moment to collect himself, and--

He didn’t get that chance, as a beam of light cut though the spot where he had been standing before desperately jerking his body to to the side. The blue laser cut a wide swath through his cape, the edges of which were starting to ice over.

The man was on his feet, apparently recovered from taking a Mjolnir blow to the kidney. He was holding the axe in front of him somehow, despite Thor being pretty sure it was on the other side of the clearing a second ago, and oh wait, that wasn’t a laser, it was a constant stream of pressurized ice. What was this, the Axe of Ancient Winters?

“Is that a weapon from Jotunheim?” Thor called down from the roof as the ice beam petered out.

“Don’t you dare talk about Jotunheim!” the boy yelled at him, loosing three arrows one after another. Now further away and not pinned to a rock wall, Thor easily dodged.

He looked back to the man, who was spinning in what was an obvious wind-up to a throw the arrows were a distraction for. His arms were frosting over in whatever ice magic drove his weapon, which was itself covered in a thin layer of jagged ice. Thor’s instincts told him to hit the ground now, and he dropped to his belly onto the roofing sod and timbers. There was the sharp, shattering crack of a sonic boom, and the axe whizzed overhead with a roar like a Midgardian jet, spinning into the distant sky.

“Huh, he really is trying to kill me,” Thor muttered in slight awe, as if this had just occurred to him.

“Perhaps we got off on the wrong foot. Is it possible for us to discuss this civilly over ale?” he called out, not getting up from his position lying on the roof.

There was no response from below, though he could hear the child scrambling over some rocks, perhaps to get a vantage point to try to shoot him again.

Then the axe came back from the direction it had flown into the distance, spinning towards its master. Thor heard it hit his hand with a hard smack.

“Oh, yours does that too!” he called out with genuine excitement as he got an idea. “Let’s have a trade and compare!”

He stood up, and threw Mjolnir at the man. The axe-wielder didn’t take the bait to throw his own weapon, as he merely braced with his shield.

But Thor had been counting on that.

He had thrown his hammer fast enough to appear to be a genuine hard throw, but slow enough that his target could easily track its trajectory. He could see the wheels turning in the hard-eyed man’s head, and he saw him make the decision. It was one he’d seen many times before.

“ _I’ll catch his weapon and use it against him,_ ” the expression said, and Thor carefully schooled his face to not give the game away.

The man dropped the shield and readied his hand to catch the hammer, and Thor knew he’d won. The man wrapped his fingers around Mjolnir’s handle, and like a puppet with strings cut, the hammer suddenly fell to the ground with a force that cracked the rock underneath.

“What-” the man said, already letting go. Good reaction -- the usual instinct was to hold onto the handle and try to pull the hammer up, uselessly -- but the surprise was all he needed.

In one smooth motion, Thor braced himself against a timber, pushed off with his legs, and launched himself towards the man. He rocketed towards him, leaving behind the arrows the boy had fired to intercept him, picking up the hammer as he reached the painted man. He had put up his shield to block, but that was fine. Thor slammed into the shield, but the man hadn’t had time to brace himself correctly, and fell backwards, overbalancing.

Thor’s momentum carried him past the man, but he dropped Mjolnir onto the prone man’s shield, still protecting his chest. Thor hit the ground hard in an uncontrolled roll, protecting his head with his arms.  
Yeah, he was going to hurt in a few hours. Woozily, he stood up.

And immediately took an arrow to the tricep. His arm went numb from whatever magic the kid had in those arrows, and it hurt far more than a mere stone arrow had a right to. He yelled as he dropped to his knee, clutching at his arm. It had missed everything vital, if barely, thank Odin and Bor, but that arm definitely wasn’t going to be much use. Blood was already running down to his hand.

“Father! Father! What did you do to him?”

The boy’s father was howling in futile rage, his heels slamming into the ground and striking deep fissures into the stone with each impact. His free hand was scrabbling at Mjolnir as his eyes and veins bulged with the effort. His shield was pinned hard to his chest, the edges digging into the muscle of his pectorals and abdomen. That could not have been comfortable.

Then his entire body burst into flame, the tattoo glowing a hot-iron red. The kicks to the rock became even fiercer, with torso-sized boulders flung away from each impact as if they were small pebbles. As he watched several boulders that had to weigh a few tons skip across the clearing and into the ravine, Thor was suddenly _extremely_ grateful the man hadn't started off the fight with this technique.

He howled like a thing possessed as he struggled, pressed against the hammer, tried to lift it off, shift it off the shield, move the shield out from under it -- anything. After almost a minute, the flames sputtered and died, though his screaming and struggling didn’t.

Throughout all of this, the hammer sat perfectly still on the shield, not moving an millimeter, as if it was entirely ignoring the struggle below it.

“I wouldn’t break the cliff anymore if I were you,” Thor gasped. “You’ll just fall until it pins you again, and you don’t want to repeat that particular cycle very many times.”

The man just screamed louder, if that was possible, but he stopped kicking at the ground.

“Run, boy!”

“What?”

“Run, Atreus! Asgard cannot take you!” He turned to Thor with a look of such seething hatred that Thor thought he might burst into flames himself. Heimdall may have had a gaze that could see all, but this man’s stare was nearly a physical weapon.

This was not just rage behind his eyes, Thor knew. This was not only anger. This man was terrified. Not of what Thor would do to him, but what he thought Thor would do to his son. What had happened to these people, to make them fear Asgard so much?

“I don’t want to hurt you or your son,” Thor said between breaths. “I don’t even know why you attacked me in the first place!”

The boy -- Atreus -- put himself between Thor and his father, face determined, and drew an arrow.

“I won’t leave you, Father. Take off your spell,” he told Thor, “or I’ll kill you.”

Thor tried to move his arm, but it responded sluggishly. Better than it was, but still not really useful. “Not until I trust that you won’t just -- argh -- try to cut off my head again. I would like to just talk, sort out whatever misunderstanding this is. Please,” he added hastily.

“Maybe you should,” Thor heard the severed head’s slightly muffled voice from the other side of the pinned (and still yelling) man, “Not many of your enemies actually want to talk. And Thor would never offer you mercy-”

Thor’s eyes widened. Even at the worst of his arrogant youth, that wasn’t true. He may have been a hotheaded arse eager to pick fights and ruthless in combat, but he would never kill a helpless or surrendering opponent in cold blood. “What? No, that’s not-”

There was another peal of thunder on top of them, far louder than the one that Thor had created earlier. The clearing lit up again like the day, and the wind shrieked like a terrified beast as it blasted suddenly across the clearing. Lightning arced across the ground, the cabin, the trees.

And there was suddenly another man in the clearing. He was nearly tall enough to look the Hulk in the eye, and dressed in heavy furs and leathers. His hood was drawn, and all Thor could see was a dirty red beard and faintly glowing eyes. He loomed over them all, and he smelled of ozone and cooked blood and stale beer and mead. One of his hands hung loosely, and the other held the edge of his cloak.

“You are right, traitor,” the man said. His voice rumbled like the thunder that preceded him, even deeper than the man pinned under Mjolnir. His words crackled with every syllable, as if his speech itself was imbued with lightning. “None of you will leave here alive. You have all defied Asgard for too long. To think, if you had just given my brother what we wanted, my father was planning to be merciful.” He slowly turned towards Thor. “And you, little...imposter? Don’t worry. You’ll be able to have your words with them soon.” He smiled. It was a cruel smile, the smile of a child pulling wings off of ants, malicious joy only brought to the surface by the thought of blood about to be spilled. “In Helheim.”


	3. Chapter 3

“Well,” Thor said, reaching up to pull the arrow out of his arm with his good hand. With a sharp yank, the arrow slid out from the muscle, and he made a show of examining the blood-soaked arrowhead. Hmm. Not bad craftsmanship at all. He might make a gift of it to Hawkeye. If he was on Midgard, he might as well swing by and say hello.

He pushed thoughts of Jane out of his head.

“Looks like you’ve moved to the front of the line.”

He held out his hand, and Mjolnir flew from the painted man’s shield back to Thor’s hand. He started to spin the hammer by the strap, and it glowed with blue lightning. A few bolts arced to the ground.

“But know this, stranger,” Thor continued, his voice rising as the whir of the spinning hammer began to create a sizable gust, “you will no longer terrorize these people falsely using Asgard’s name. For I am the mighty Thor, Heir-”

Then the bigger man was on him in an explosion of sparks and electricity. His thick, calloused fingers wrapped around Thor’s neck, and Thor felt his neck bend inwards under his grip. He couldn’t even gag or choke. He dropped Mjolnir as all sense left him from the pain. He pounded at the arms of the man holding him, and he could already feel his vision going black. Desperate blows that could turn granite to powder and flatten buildings might as well have been the strikes of a feather.

“You would try to take my name with an enchanted toy? You will be last, and you will curse the Norns that I did not kill you first.” He smiled cruelly. “Perhaps you will take Mimir’s place on the tree. Or just your head.”

And then he threw him. Thor hurtled into the sky, too fast to even take a breath and refill his lungs. He tried to stop his momentum, or at least slow himself, but he couldn’t overcome the force of the throw. The force of the air stung his eyes and ripped at his clothes. Every snowflake in the air hit his skin like a tiny, stinging comet, and the wind howled in his ears.

Then he hit the mountain.

\------

Father, as soon as the spelled hammer had been removed, had leapt to his feet, and then to where his blades were still lying discarded against the stone besides the house. While the two Thors (or, more likely in Atreus’ mind, Thor and the probably insane sorcerer who thought he was the God of Thunder) squared off and Thor growled his threats into the rapidly-purpling face of the shorter man, his father wrapped the chains around his forearms.

Atreus watched the probably-not-the-real-Thor hurtle in the direction of the distant mountains for a second, then turned back to the probably-the-real-Thor still standing in front of the house before the person rapidly receding into the distance could strike anything. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. Thor was already turning to him, great arcs of lightning peeling off of Mjolnir like waves rippling in a lake.

“ _Fálki lið_!” Atreus shouted, grounding the arrow just short of the God so he didn’t destroy it. As it touched the ground, a cast of a dozen glowing falcons burst into the air, rising as if carried by a powerful thermal. They brought their wings in, and dived-bombed their target, ghostly talons raking across his head and shoulders.Thor ignored them as if they were no more concerning than a hard rain, and raised his hammer. A short sword, tied to a chain, wrapped around the hammer and blazed into flame.

Kratos reeled himself in with a murderous howl, the other blade held forward in his hand as he approached as if to impale the Storm God’s forehead. Thor wrenched his arm down and ducked so Kratos went flying overhead. The blade wrapped around Mjolnir untangled itself as if by its own will, and Atreus buried two arrows into Thor’s shoulder. They sank into the layers of fur and leather, but Thor gave no sign he even felt them. Atreus thought they probably didn’t even reach his skin. Not that it would have mattered. Even after his mother’s spell of invulnerability had been broken, Baldur had regenerated from enough arrows to fell a dozen of the strongest elk, and Thor was much bigger and stronger than his brother.

Kratos twisted in the air as he passed Thor’s back. He reeled in the blade that had been wrapped around Mjolnir, and threw the other forward. It buried itself into his other shoulder blade, mirroring where Atreus’ arrows had sunk in. That drew blood, and Thor yelled in pain like a split tree. Kratos swung the other blade in an arc, aimed at Thor’s neck. Thor brought up his arm to block the blade, and it dug into the elaborately decorated bracer on his arm, but went no further. Thor raised Mjolnir.

“Your last mistake,” Thor said.

“Oh bloody Hel,” Mimir said at the same time from Kratos’ belt.

Thor brought the hammer down onto the rock at his feet.

Atreus slammed his eyes closed, but the burst of light flashed the world pure white even through his eyelids, and the searing heat felt like the world itself was burning. The thunderclap from Thor’s bolt was the loudest sound he’d ever heard. Even the bolt called by the other Thor was like a slightly raised polite request compared to this. It was not so much a sound that he heard as a wave of pressure he felt on his face and in his chest. It didn’t rattle his skull, but picked it up and shook it like it was trying to dislodge a coin stuck in a jar.

It took him a moment to realize that the ground was starting to fall from under his feet.

He turned, still barely able to see, and started to run. He didn’t know to where. He just had to get away, before the cliff collapsed under him. He could survive the fall -- he was part God of a foreign land, and part Jötunn -- but nearly blind and deaf as he was, he couldn’t afford to have his feet off the ground. He could feel the rock crumbling beneath his feet as he ran, stumbling, in the direction he knew the rock walls that surrounded the back and sides of the cabin to be. He couldn’t slow down or trip now, or he’d be caught in the landslide of the collapsing cliff.

He reached the wall and scrambled up. He did not stop once he reached the top, but kept running until the rock under his feet felt solid and unbroken again.

He turned back to where he knew his father to be, blinking hard to drive the swirls and blobs from his eyes. He still could hear nothing but ringing. His ears hurt intensely, like a pick had been jammed into each one, but he ignored it.

Eventually, he realized that he could still see nothing not because he was blind, but because the house was gone. The cliff had collapsed all the way back to the pine copse. Where there had once been Atreus’ home, there was now dust and empty air. Everything he had was gone. Everything of his mother that he wasn’t wearing was now in a pile of rock somewhere down below.

He couldn't see his father. Or Thor. All he could see was the massive plume of dust and powdered snow billowing from the ravine.

“Father!” he yelled. He heard no response from Kratos, but a small grey blur shot past him from the smoke cloud. For a terrifying moment, his heart skipped a beat, until he saw it was the plain, cuboid shape of the other Thor’s Mjolnir. He followed it as it streaked towards the mountain the shorter Thor had been thrown into, towards the top of a landslide and below a plume of dust rising from a crater in the distant peak.

Was that Thor still alive…?

His attention was pulled back to the empty ravine that was once his home as he heard his father howl in the deep and animalistic scream that was the all-consuming hatred of Spartan Rage. Thor’s massive body came flying up from the dust cloud, followed shortly by his father. His father grabbed Thor by the foot, and as if pulled by invisible strings, his direction reversed towards what little ground remained. He slammed Thor into the ground with yet another shuddering crash, driving his body deep into the rock. He jumped up to bury his knees into the God’s chest, and brought his hands above his head for a hammer blow.

But Thor had a hammer of his own to meet it, and this one was iron. He couldn’t hear it -- he could tell now that his ears were bleeding as he felt the warmth ooze down his neck -- but he could see the bones of his father’s fingers and hands shatter against the side of the hammer. Still caught in his rage, Kratos didn’t seem to notice. Atreus wasn’t even sure he felt his hands break. His father always seemed to lose himself somewhat during the duration of his flaming rages, becoming blind to everything but whatever he was pummeling into submission. Atreus pulled his bow woozily, aiming an arrow at Thor’s head. A wave of nausea hit him, and he lowered the bow. He couldn’t risk hitting Father.

Kratos pulled back a ruined fist to pummel Thor in the face, but Thor backhanded him across the cheek first. Kratos tumbled away. Thor stood up, looking dirtied but otherwise unhurt.

“That was almost fun for a moment. I used to be so angry that I was never able to fight Zeus before you killed him, that you robbed me of such a fight… but if this was all it took to kill the Whore-King of Olympus, I supposed you did me a favor. So I will do you one now.” He raised Mjolnir. “I will give you a death in battle, so you may see Valhalla, Ghost of Sparta.”

Atreus, finally, had a clear shot. He fired three shots in rapid succession, coated in the light of Alfheim. One hit in the back of Thor’s hand, one in the back of his neck, and another in the small of his back. Thor grunted in pain, and turned. He did not forget about the prone Kratos, stepping on his chest and pressing down hard.

“You will watch your father die, boy,” he snarled at Atreus. “And then-” He stopped. His glowing blue eyes flicked to the sky, and widened. He brought up an arm,and stepped off Kratos to brace himself.

The other Thor smashed into his bracer, hammer-first. The grounded Thor did not lose his footing, but slid across the ground, chips of rock flying off his heel like water parting off the bow of a ship.

The shockwave and wind arrived a moment later. Atreus shielded his eyes.

“You’ve going to have to try harder than _that_ ,” the blond Thor snarled. Then he let go of his own hammer and dropped to his feet.

The rock, already cracked and broken beneath the larger Thor’s feet, shattered into great fissures. He screamed, but there was a note of panic in his voice. His entire body trembled as he pushed up against the humble, unadorned hammer, balanced perfectly still against his forearm. He ground his teeth, and beads of sweat instantly pooled on his forehead.

“How?” he snarled between his clenched teeth. He braced the arm holding back the weapon with his own Mjolnir, but it didn’t seem to make his task any easier. Instead, he began to sink into the rock as the hammer pressed him down, the fissures widening and deepening.

Atreus recognized that look. It was not one he would have ever expected to see on the face of the God of Strength. It was an expression he had last seen on the face of another Aesir, as Kratos stood over the corpse of a man, head split open, who should not have been able to die.

It was a look of fear. It was a the look of a man confronted with a thing that should not be, of an impossible reality that inescapably, undeniably was. It was the look of the immortal, seeing their own mortality.

But, for some reason he couldn’t fathom, the red-caped Thor looked just as horrified. “It’s...not possible… you are not worthy, the spell won’t allow you to lift it!”

The cliff began to shake again as Thor sank into the rock as if it were merely thick porridge, still straining against the hammer.

The other Thor looked around wildly. “Where is-! Boy! Small child, Atreus, you must run!” He ran over to Kratos and heaved him onto his shoulder. “There’s no time to explain, but we must leave this place with great haste!”

Atreus’ eardrums had by this point healed enough to be able to hear what the man was saying. “What’s happening?”

The other Thor ran up to him and picked him up around the waist as if he was a sack of grain without breaking stride.

“If I remember the spell parameters right, Mjolnir currently weighs as much as a small continent, and it will rapidly increase until it reaches a mass that...other Thor cannot withstand. And then it will fall to the ground. It will not be able to bleed off all of it before it strikes.”

Atreus, who was still processing and protesting being picked up by this complete stranger also carrying his father over his other shoulder, didn’t grasp what that meant.

For the third time that day, Atreus heard the loudest sound he had ever heard in his life. Everything began to shake, like the world was tearing itself apart. Atreus had the terrifying thought that _this was Ragnarok, and it was not just the end of Asgard, but everything_ , and then he was falling, and then he thought no more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter of just fightin' for now, promise.


	4. Chapter 4

Kratos awoke in a pile of rubble. He stood up, shaking off slabs of stone and shattered wooden splinters the size of swords from his shoulders as if they were dust.

“Atreus?” he called out, as the various scrapes, cuts and gashes across his body filled in with new, unscarred flesh. The ashes of his greatest sin returned as well. He still felt them as clear and fresh as they day they were pressed into his skin.

“Atreus?” he called again, louder, when he heard no response. He realized that his right wrist and ulna were broken. With his good hand, he forced the bones back into position without looking at them changing his expression. There was a snapping crunch, a quieter sort of grinding sound, and then he flexed his hand and rotated his wrist to test that the bones had regenerated correctly. He called Leviathan back to his hand, and after a moment, it came spinning into his palm, the head covered in sap from the pine it had been embedded in. He flared its ice magic, and the sap froze and shattered away, leaving the metal spotless.

“Boy!” he yelled now as if his son was merely being insubordinate, his tone becoming angrier and more impatient to stop the panic rising in his chest from escaping out his throat. “Answer me!”

“Father!” he heard his son say, slightly muffled. “Over here!”

He ran to the spot from which he heard his son’s voice. It was coming from a pile of stone and slush and shattered trees. He clipped Leviathan onto its hook on his back and began digging his son from the rubble pile. He threw aside stone and logs as fast as he dared to not collapse it onto his son. After what felt like far too long but was only a few seconds, he saw not his son, but the back of the man they had fought with, and then fought alongside against the God of Thunder.

The other Thor. The cape was gone, as was most of the armor on his back. His back was a bloody, shredded mess, though none of the scrapes or cuts appeared to be particularly deep. He was unconscious or dead, but this time Kratos did not even bother to look closely enough to check.   

“Atreus!” Kratos said, softer this time but no less urgently. “Where are you?”

“I’m under him! He protected me from the explosion but I think he got knocked out!”

 Kratos pulled the body off of his son and tossed it aside as if it was another rock. Atreus looked up at him, looking shaken but unhurt. Kratos reached down, grabbed the boy around the bicep -- he could no longer make a full circle around the boy’s arm with his fingers, but only just -- and pulled him to his feet. Somehow, he had managed to hang on to his bow, and his quiver was still tied to him, though all the arrows were gone.

“Check yourself for injuries and your gear for damage. Be quick. We cannot stay here.”

 Kratos looked around, as if he expected an attack to be imminent. He had no reason not to think so. Whatever the other Thor had done, it had leveled half of the forest. Faye's protection was gone completely. Too many trees had been felled, and the entire ward had collapsed.@ Thor may have had to retreat, but Asgard would regroup quickly.

That reminded him. He checked at his belt, and saw that Mimir was still clipped to his side. He wasn’t moving, or speaking, but his face was slack. He raised the head to look into his face, and saw his lip twitch and his eyelids flutter. So, the magic that revived him still functioned, and he had simply been knocked unconscious by the explosion.

Kratos filed that information away, and returned the head to his belt.

“Is Mimir…” Atreus trailed off, looking worriedly at Kratos and the head, pausing his inspection of the bow for cracks.

“The head is unconscious. Do not be distracted by it. Finish your inspection, and then we leave.”

Atreus paused again. “Why do you hesitate, boy?” Kratos said. Impatience did not so much creep into his tone as much as suffuse it, like a towel absorbing water.

“The...other Thor. He helped us. He carried us, both of us, away. He shielded me. I think he might be a fr-an ally,” he quickly amended. His father had eased slightly since their journey to Jotunheim, but he was still deeply cautious and distrustful of...well, everyone, friends and strangers alike. Even Brok and Sindri were on the receiving end of occasional suspicious, piercing stares when Kratos thought no one was looking.

From what little Atreus knew of Father’s past, and hearing the scathing hatred in Freya’s voice as she held her son’s broken body, he couldn’t say that he hadn’t earned the right to be distrustful. Though it was still annoying, sometimes.

Kratos said nothing, eyes narrowing. He was in even less of a mood to argue with his son than usual, but a stirring from the object of discussion forestalled him. He pulled Leviathan from his back and held it warily.

 

\-------

 

Everything hurt.

Well, yes, everything did hurt, but some things hurt more than others. For instance, his back felt like thousands of Muspelheim iron-digger ants were burrowing into his skin and leaving their molten-iron foragings there, so that was less than grand. His eyes stung _and_ burned; that was a novel form of pain. Oh, and his arm still had the arrow wound in it, so that was fun.

Woozily, he stood up. Or tried to. He made it about as far as one heel and one knee on the ground before the “We’ll just stay here, thank you” vote gained the majority, and he stopped trying to stand. He looked up.

“Oh, good, you’re both looking fine,” he said cheerfully. Or tried to. With the pain he was in, it felt kind of strained, as did his smile. He looked at the boy. “Atreus, was it? Are you unhurt?”

“I think so,” the child answered cautiously, then looked to his father for guidance, who just continued to glare at Thor like a particularly loathsome insect.

“I realize that we got off on the wrong foot, and I deeply apologize for what happened to your home,” he said, panting a little, “but I swear on my mother in Valhalla I did not arrive there on purpose, nor did or do I mean you any harm, nor did I lead that....other...person to your home.”

The tattooed man gave no sign of having heard him, just continued to glare and hold his axe. However, Thor took this as a good sign, as hey, not having an axe swung at his face was technically progress on the day.

“Now, I’m in a bit of a...state at the moment. I would like to heal myself, but I need my hammer to do so,” he said slowly and carefully, as if he was speaking to a wild, agitated animal, “I am going to call it now, because I would like to not bleed out, and I would ask you not to split my skull with that axe or those...chain-swords.” He smiled, and tried to force it into something actually charming instead of a pained grimace.

Still, the man didn’t move, change his expression, or do anything but continue to breathe lightly. If it wasn’t for that, Thor thought he might have been talking to a particularly realistic statue. He didn’t even _blink_. The boy looked like he wanted to say something, but was following his father’s lead and remaining silent.

_Well, he hasn’t said no._

Thor slowly held his hand out, fingers spread. The man tensed slightly, but still didn’t move. There was a whirring sound, growly in volume, first slightly and then rapidly, and Mjolnir’s handle fit neatly into his hand.

There was a flash of lightning, and Thor felt his injuries heal. The flayed flesh on his back re-knit, expelling pebbles and sand and shards of wood as it did. The arrow wound on his arm closed, and the bruising on his temples subsided. He grabbed his nose and wrenched it back into position. He saw stars for a moment -- resetting a nose hurt almost as much as breaking it in the first place -- and the magic helpfully fixed the cartilage seamlessly.

The light faded, and the bearded man had pulled his son behind him now. Instead of the shield-and-axe combo he had initially fought Thor with, he was now holding the the jagged, deep-bladed shortswords, the chains wrapped around his wrists.

“Easy, easy!” Thor said, “Look, I’ll put it down, see?”

Thor gently placed Mjolnir on the ground, and took several large steps away from it, holding his hands in the air. The bearded man looked unimpressed.

“That means nothing,” he growled, and yeah, that was technically true. It was more a symbolic show of good faith than anything else. Unfortunately, the tattooed man didn’t seem to be one for symbolism. One of the chains shook slightly with the movement, though Thor couldn’t tell if he did in on purpose to be intimidating or not. Considering what Thor’d seen him do so far, and that he apparently came out of that impact without a scratch, Thor was _plenty_ intimidated, thank you. He was pretty sure he’d rather fight one of the Kursed again than this man. The only reason he “won” the last fight was the pinned-by-Mjolnir trick, and that wasn’t going to work again.

Thor smiled in a way he knew was charming and disarming, but the man seemed irritatingly immune to it. It reminded Thor uncomfortably of Odin, in the times his father had truly lost patience with Thor’s rash actions in his youth.

Although, considering the time period Thor was including as “youth” ended less than ten years ago, perhaps that was the wrong descriptor.

Oh, right, back to the present and trying to _not_ be carved to pieces by the man whose house he may have accidentally destroyed.

“That’s true, but I’m honestly just as confused about what’s happened in the last half an hour as you are, so if we could try to just talk this out, I’d appreciate it.” He looked into the crater they were standing at the edge of, and the trees flattened for miles around them. “Preferably somewhere less...exposed?”

Still the man stood, as hard as granite and iron. His son moved towards him a little. “Father, I-”

“I have made my decision. You are not with Asgard. But you did lead them to us, even if it was not your intent. We have lost our home.” He raised one of his chained swords to point at Thor. “ _Leave.”_  

Thor sighed. Well, he supposed that was to be expected. Still, he wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to be friends with these people, as much as his mind was still burning with questions. He considered offering them compensation for their lost property, but another look on the man’s face made him think better of it. He could just go somewhere else on Midgard and try to figure out where this taller, smellier, and (he hated to admit it) stronger imposter of himself came from. Perhaps he’d pay Stark a visit. He raised Mjolnir over his head.

“Very well. Heimdall!”

He stood, with his hammer over his head, for a few quiet seconds. He frowned, and thrust Mjolnir up again, a little more forcefully this time. “Heimdall?”

No response.

“I, uh, I’m sorry, this hasn’t happened before,” he said a little nervously, and shook the hammer slightly as if the movement would make him easier to see.

The man and son watched this, bemused. “What are you…?” the boy trailed off.

Giving up, Thor let his hand fall. Well, Heimdall would still be able to see him, anyway. Maybe there was something wrong with the bridge.

Yes, that must be it. Heimdall would have pulled him out, if he could. They had needed to replace the entire structure, after all, and such a complex piece of machinery was bound to have some issues here and there for a few decades.

“I was trying to leave,” he said, forcing his frustration down. “But-”

“What the fuck happened here?” a gruff voice interrupted Thor. The voice had the sort of tone and timbre that always sounded like it was shouting, no matter the volume.

A bald man in ornate but very dirty brass armor seemed to walk out of the very air midstride, as if he had stepped suddenly into reality His skin was the same blue as the Frost Giants, and Thor twitched instinctively, though the man was clearly not Jotunn. He barely came up to Thor’s waist, and his eyes had white sclera and dark blue irises. He looked Thor up and down, his face in a slight frown. Thor thought it looked like the man’s default expression. “The fuck are you?” he asked Thor curtly.

“I am Thor Odinson,” Thor replied automatically. His brain caught up with him halfway through “Odin.” Considering he just _fought_ what seemed to be an evil version of himself that these people were more familiar with, that may have not have been the best introduction. “I mean-”

“The fuck you are,” the man said. “So who’s the pissmop with the brain damage?” he asked the pair, dismissing Thor.

“Uh,” Atreus said stupidly, “hi, Brok. Well, he _said_ he’s Thor, and he has his own Mjolnir…”

The short man barked a humorless, angry laugh, and turned back to Thor, who was feeling somewhat put out over being so rudely dismissed. To his surprise, the smaller man marched up to him without a trace of fear.

“Now look, you deluded sack of shit, I don’t give a Revenant’s rotten tit if you want to go around tellin’ everyone you’re the big idiot, it’s your fuckin’ funeral, but you ain’t gonna walk around pretendin’ to wield our work, you go it?”

Thor took a step back, confused. He put a hand around Mjolnir’s handle. Brok looked at the hammer, and his eyes widened. “What the...let me look at that hammer,” he demanded, glaring at Thor.

Thor, at this point, was beginning to feel just a bit overwhelmed. Yes, not thinking clearly is clearly why actually obeyed the order and set the hammer on the ground in front of the man.

“What, couldn’t just hand it to me?” he said sardonically, and went to pick it up. He didn’t. His eyes bulged for a moment as he struggled to pull up the hammer. After a moment, he gave up, and glared at Thor.

“Ok, pissmop, maybe I underestimated you. What’s the spell you used to do that? I can see it, but I can’t read it, and believe me, there’s very little magic I can’t make heads or bollocks of.”

“My father cast the spell himself, so that no one who was unworthy of the throne of Asgard may lift the hammer.”

Brok was looking increasingly frustrated, apparently deciding that Thor was either lying to him to protect his secrets or so crazy he had no idea what he was saying.

“So, what happened here?” Brok asked the tattooed man, apparently deciding to change his path of questioning.

“He showed up on a rainbow in the middle of the night,” Atreus said, pointing at Thor, “He was unconscious, so we tied him up, but then Thor--uh, I mean, the other Thor, I guess, the one from the statue-- showed up while we were fighting. He--” he pointed at Thor again-- “helped us, and at the end, he used his hammer to do this.”

Thor noticed he didn’t mention in this summary that he had pinned his father beneath Mjolnir during the fight. As his father didn’t correct him either, Thor decided to not add that detail.

“Normally, the mass generated by the spell only works to make it unliftable, as a counter to the lifting force, but does not affect what it rests on,” Thor added. “So it could have an effectively unlimited mass if one who is unworthy tries to lift it, yet not damage its surroundings.I don’t think someone being able to hold the hammer aloft for long enough for the additional mass to overwhelm the safeguards was something my father planned for when he designed the spell.”

“Oooo-k,” Brok said, now eyeing the hammer as if it was a live cobra clipped to Thor’s belt, “I suppose that explains the what, though I’m gonna want to know about that spell in more detail later.”

“We should not be here,” the tattooed man said. “We have been in the open for too long.”

Thor smiled agreeably. “That does sound like a good idea-”

“I did not say I changed my mind. You will not follow us.”

Brok whirled on the taller man. “Now look here, Kratos,” and oh _finally_ a name, ”this here is some new magic, and there is no way in Hel I’m gonna let you chase that off before I can learn it. If he leaves before I do because of your usual charm of a piss hole, you’ll go back to fixin’ your own gear, and I saw what state your shit was in before I got to it. And don’t think you’ll be able to get my brother to do it when I’m not lookin’.”  

The two men glared at each other, unblinking, for the better course of a minute. Thor glanced at the child and considered making small talk with the boy, if only to break the _oppressive_ tension, and had to literally bite down on his tongue to keep from doing so.

To his mild surprise, Kratos was the one who backed down first, stepping back and away from the blacksmith, turning his back in what Thor thought was a bit of a childish reaction.

He was an _aggressive_ pouter. It reminded him of Loki. If Loki was half-naked, covered in warpaint, bald, had a beard, was double the mass in muscle…

OK, so there wasn’t a lot about Kratos to remind Thor of Loki, but the body language was still enough, and the grief was still fresh enough that many things reminded him of Loki, no matter how tenuous the connection.

“Fine,” he growled, to Thor’s mild amusement. That was also classic Loki, though his brother would probably have thrown in a subtle parting insult as well.

Brok nodded. “Good. See ya back at the workshop. Later, you little fart,” he said with false hostility to Atreus, who waved in return. Then he took a step forward into nothing again and was gone, the opposite of the way he came in.

Thor felt a headache coming on.

“Ugghhh...Brother, have ye ever considered maybe puttin’ me someplace safe _before_ you go into battle? Or leavin’ me in your son’s care? He seems to get his arse knocked around a lot less.”  

Oh good, that should help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BROK BROK BROK 
> 
> BROK FUN TIME


End file.
